


i've been digging your grave

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Dark, Harm to Animals, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-22 09:09:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7428691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is eight years old, the world knows, when he meets Steve. No one knows that, at eight years old, the blade of Bucky's knife reflects the sharp edges of Steve's smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Right, so on tumblr acrownofbloodandroses made the perfectly reasonable request of: What's your favorite 'get-together' story for Bucky and Steve? To which my mind went, You know what's missing in this fandom? _Serial killer AUs._ So, fair warning. Animals and people die in this fic. Neither Steve nor Bucky suffer, but they're both pretty dark, and they have no problem with the rest of the world suffering at their hands. Title paraphrased from a line in "Pretty Polly," the old folk song.

It’s the Commandos who write the story of Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes. It’s Monty’s idea, Monty – with his disregarded titles and his unused English degree – who understands that the whole world wants the epic tale of Captain America, that if the Howlies don’t give them something then the reporters will keep digging until they hit a vein.

“Gold?” Jackie asks, lighting a fresh cigarette. “Or blood?” He hides his face behind a blue-tinged cloud of smoke, his dark eyes focused on some point that none of them can see. It was Jackie, who could watch Sarge work without flinching—Jackie, who had chosen to keep Sarge’s knife.

“Everyone knows you spin stories out of gold,” Gabe interjects, the skin under his fingernails white where they pressed into his glass.

The others nod, because Jones always knows best. Even if –

“It sure ain’t  _ their  _ story, if you leave out the blood.” Dum Dum spits his tobacco into his empty beer glass, even though he’d barely tasted the chew, drains the scotch beside it to rinse the words from his mouth.

“It  _ will be _ their story,” Jim declares. The beer splashes when he pours himself a fresh pint, though it must be the over full pitcher – it’s only his second of the night, far too early for unsteady hands. “So where does it begin?”

* * *

Bucky Barnes saved Steve Rogers from a bully when they were eight years old, an hour after school and all the boys killing time in the empty lot just past Sanderson’s store.

Steve had started the fight, of course. It was always Steve who started the fights, and Bucky who finished them. “You shouldn’t talk that way about someone’s mother,” Steve opened, the first volley of shots like pebbles hurled into a giant’s face. “You should back off,” Bucky offered, smiling at the boy he’d pinned to the ground, ending the fight. None of the boys – gathered in a circle to watch, dead silent where moments ago they’d been cheering for Herman to crush Steve Rogers’s face – ever said anything about the knife, flipped open and held easy in Barnes’s left hand.

By third grade, the only boys stupid enough to go tattling to a grown up about Barnes’s switchblade were the ones who deserved the scars.

“That cat do something to you?” Steve wondered, strolling into an alley after dark because he’d caught a glimpse of familiar pale skin and dark hair that had convinced everyone else to back away.

Bucky shrugged, peering up at Steve from where he had squatted down, the edges of his shoes tacky with blood. “It wouldn’t shut up,” he said, glancing dismissively at the ground before looking back at Steve, tilting his head and staring at the blond boy with icy, unblinking eyes.

“Aren’t you scared?” he asked, after a full minute of silence had passed, when Steve had stared right back, thumbs tucked into his suspenders like Bucky was holding jacks and not a bloodied knife.

Steve raised eyebrows that were nearly invisible in the fading light, the white-blond of his lashes making him look hairless, a boy singed by standing too close to the fuse. “Ma always says I oughta be,” he confessed, wrinkling his nose and twisting his mouth in what might have been guilt, or maybe a smile. “Guess I haven’t managed it yet.”

Bucky traced the point of his blade around Steve’s ankle just above the dusty white edge of his sock. Too light to draw blood, but hard enough to raise goosebumps along Steve’s skin, to set him twitching like his body knew it should get away. Steve’s lip curled upward into a smirk, and Bucky’s shoulders twitched – the body always knew when to run.

“Mr. Goldhammer beat his wife so bad my Ma says she’s like to die,” Steve announced, teeth still bared in a smile, tiny, frail fingers pressed to the specks of blood on Bucky’s face. “He’s passed out drunk in his living room, I saw him through his window on the way here.”

“You want something, Rogers?” Bucky wondered, and Steve’s grin widened like he could see in the dark, could catch the way the pulse ratcheted up in Bucky’s throat.

“Don’t you?” he replied, reaching down to pull Bucky onto his feet, wrapping his hand carelessly around the sharp edge of the blade.

* * *

The Commandos don’t tell the whole story – the story they  _ could  _ tell, because there are so many parts they’ve spoken around, and there is a difference between keeping quiet about the love between men and keeping quiet about the love of a knife’s edge, the love in blue eyes when the blade sinks in – but when Monty finds his son leaning into another man, he gathers the boy close and reassures him that:

Steve was sixteen and drunk on cheap liquor, the first time he kissed Bucky Barnes. Actually, Bucky kissed him, two boys on a rooftop after the sun had gone down, Barnes twirling his oldest knife between his fingers, restless and scratching under his skin, over a month since the knife had slid under anyone’s flesh but his own. The day before he’d taken apart a stray dog with one of his newer knives, all of them gifts from Steve, desperate for it and left unsatisfied in the end.

“Give me the knife,” Steve said, and held out his hand too close to the twisting blade, bony fingers scarred with a lifetime of ‘too close’.

“Fuck you,” Bucky hissed, and jerked the knife away before it touched skin, shoving down the throb in his chest at the sight of Steve’s unmarked palm, blinking until he could stare at Steve’s skin without painting it red.

“All right.” Steve shrugged. Then he took two steps away and cracked the whiskey bottle hard against the rail of the fire escape, shattering the rim and leaving the top of the bottle in glittering, jagged shards.

“I was drinking that, punk,” Bucky protested, his voice fading away when Steve looked at him and grinned, slow and hungry, broken glass reflected in his eyes and the edges of his smile. He pressed the bottle up to his mouth, blood blossoming where cracked glass met the pink skin of his bottom lip, flicking out his tongue to drag it over the freshly serrated rim.

“Bucky,” Steve said, quiet, spitting flecks of blood onto Bucky’s face. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”

“You want something, Rogers?” Bucky demanded, dropping the knife to get both hands on Steve’s face, breathing the words into Steve’s shredded lips, knocking the bottle away and licking at the ragged, whiskey-hot edges of Steve’s tongue.

“Yeah,” Steve hummed, sinking his teeth into the cuts on his own tongue, moaning when Bucky bit down on the skin of his throat, lapping his way back up to the lipstick red of Steve’s mouth. “I want you to pick up the knife.”

If Captain America loved Sergeant Barnes, Monty tells his handsome, kind-hearted son, then you know it’s not wrong. He hands his boy one of the propaganda photos and hugs him close, both of them looking at Sergeant Barnes’s arm over Steve’s shoulder and the adoration in Captain America’s eyes. Monty doesn’t say a word about the glint of steel in Steve’s smile, or the way Cap’s hand wrapped around Bucky’s waist, resting on the hilt of Sarge’s knife.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked for a post-TWS sequel, so here it is.

It’s easy to find Bucky, after Steve finally manages to evade Sam Wilson’s care and the Black Widow’s careful gaze. Steve follows the hum in his blood, the catch in his throat and the swinging, jerking compass needle of the pulse throbbing through veins that had finally thawed. Steve follows the bodies.

At first the trail is weeks old, corpses long gone into the ground and only the stolen autopsy reports to paint the picture that Steve knows by heart, under the raw skin of his fingers or the eager edges of his tongue. Steve grins—startles the coroner back a step, retreating from the soft-spoken blond man without knowing why—the first time the body is still in the morgue. His heartbeat ratchets up, unbearable, like the aching blur of a hand in the seconds before he can finally come. This body is only a few days old, and Steve has knives tucked ready and waiting in sheaths against his skin.

The Commandos aren’t here this time, Jones’s stutter and Dugan’s wary gaze on Bucky’s fingers where he spun his favorite blade. No one here knows Steve: no one has seen him lick the blood from his teeth in a fight, no one has offered him first pick of the captured, prisoners of war brought forward as offerings to Bucky’s graceful hands.

_ The Winter Soldier could  _ kill  _ you _ , Romanoff texts, when Steve has finally come upon a body that is still warm.  _ You don’t know what you’re chasing. _ Steve grins at the phone, cocks his head and traces the latest victim’s blood in patterns over the screen. She’s right, of course: the Winter Soldier  _ could  _ kill him. That’s exactly what Steve’s been chasing all along, three long years with only his hands on the knife and nothing but ice in the taste of his blood.

He finds an offering, the next night. Watches the seedier streets for a cruel man—doesn’t watch too closely, overpowers the first one who gets too rough with a working girl, dizzy with how fast his heart is racing at the feel of yet unbroken skin under his hands—and brings him to a different alley, slams the man into the pavement when he protests.

Steve unfolds the knife, his favorite knife, the one SHIELD didn’t think twice about returning to him, never guessed that it was more vital to him than a rusted compass or a painted shield. He waits. Bucky always could sniff out fresh blood.

“I know you,” the shadow whispers, corporeal and pressed against Steve’s spine, close enough to feel the shiver Steve doesn’t try to hide, the heartbeat rising up, eager for the metal fingers wrapped around his neck.

“Yes,” Steve hisses, dropping his head back, biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. Bucky’s metal fingers twitch, tighten around the span of Steve’s exposed throat. “You know this, too,” he adds, flipping the knife around to offer Bucky the hilt, curling his hand carelessly around the whetted blade.

Bucky pulls the knife out slow, tongue darting out to taste the air, eyes fixed on the smear of Steve’s blood over polished steel. “You want something?” he murmurs, a harsh bite at the pulse jumping under Steve’s skin. Bucky’s already lifted the knife to Steve’s lips, waiting for him to curl his tongue against metal and the copper taste of his own blood before cutting delicately into the unmarked skin of Steve’s bottom lip, Steve  _ shaking  _ with the weight of steel and blood in his mouth.

Steve’s offering tries to run, then; Bucky steps out to stop him, leaves Steve aching, caught with the gasp still in his lungs and unable to exhale. That’s all right, though. Steve’s got blood pooling over his tongue and Bucky’s got the knife flashing through his fingers and a fresh canvas under his hands—and Steve would have liked it fast, a quick death, the brutal penetration of a knife into untouched skin.

Bucky lifts his head, gaze catching on the crimson of Steve’s lips, knife tracing over the whimpering man’s ribs. He arches an eyebrow, beckoning, and Steve goes, licks over his bloodied teeth and into Bucky’s waiting mouth, dragging the tips of his fingers through the patterns made by Bucky’s blade.

It’s everything Steve’s been chasing since 1944. Fast is nice, but some things—the pulse racing under Steve’s delicate skin, pounding through the cut on his lip—some things are worth the wait.


End file.
